Tuning an effect

Select an effect and four tabs appear. There’s no Save button — every control applies to the running effect as you move it, and reaches the rest of the table a moment later.

Amount

Intensity — the one slider to reach for. It sets how thick the effect is: how often particles spawn and how many exist at once. 50 is how the effect was built; slide down for a wisp, up for a downpour. Sliding back to 50 always restores the original.
Particle lifetime — how many seconds each particle lasts. Longer lives make smoke hang around; shorter ones make sparks snap out.
Runs continuously — on by default. Turn it off and give it a number of seconds, and the effect stops on its own — good for a one-off burst.
Position X / Y — exact placement, if you’d rather not drag it.

Look

Particle — the artwork each particle uses. Tap more than one and every particle picks one at random, which is how fire gets its variety.
Size and Opacity — a multiplier and a peak. Opacity keeps whatever fade the effect was built with; it just moves the ceiling.
Colour — Leave as-is uses the artwork’s own colours, One colour tints everything, and Fade between two shifts each particle from one colour to another over its life. That fade is what makes fire read as fire.
Blending — Add and Screen glow (fire, magic, sparks), Multiply darkens (smoke, gloom), Normal does neither.
Draw behind tokens — put haze and ground fog under the party instead of over them.

Motion

Speed — a multiplier on however fast the effect’s particles travel.
Direction — which way they set off. 270° is up the map, 90° is down, 0° is right.
Spread — how much they fan out. 0° is a tight jet; 360° throws particles every way, which is what a cloud wants.
Particles start — from a single point, across a circle, around a ring, along a box, or along a shape you’ve drawn. Area size sets how wide the circle or ring is.

Advanced

The full behaviour stack, plus Emitter internals for the raw spawn numbers. See building your own.

The effect library — the starting points.
Building your own — the deep end.
Keeping effects in a space — confining one to a room.